As good as Shandue McNeil’s Long Island Lightning team is, many of his best players were glued to the bench during the last high-school season.

Jason Boswell sat behind Mike Gilchrist at St. Patrick (N.J.). Jonathan Severe was in Omar Calhoun’s shadow at Christ the King. Ethan Telfair didn’t play a whole lot at Lincoln.

They have made up for it by playing major minutes this summer. And Sunday, to cap the live recruiting period, they helped lead Lightning McNeil to the Big Shots DC Slam 17U blue title with a win over Team Takeover (D.C.) at the Capital Sports Complex in District Heights, Md. The team was playing up in a bracket with 17s and 16s, its typical age group.

“We had a very good July,” McNeil said. “It was productive for a lot of the guys. The guys on my roster didn’t play a lot of high-school ball.”

The coach said his most productive player for the two-day tournament was probably guard Zach Lewis of Northwest Catholic (Conn.). Telfair, who will join Lewis at that school next year, was right up there, continuing his excellent summer repairing an image that was tarnished by a May arrest.

“He had a tremendous July,” McNeil said. “He’s been our linchpin. He makes everyone go. He gets us out in transition. He finds guys. He’s been making shots, too. He’s been solid. He left July feeling good about himself.”

Boswell, a 6-foot-7 rising junior wing going to Trinity Catholic (Conn.) next year, had a big tournament and earned some added interest from Maryland, DePaul and Villanova, McNeil said. He already had offers from Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Miami, Dayton, Houston and Western Kentucky, among others. Kuran Iverson, a highly touted forward from Northwest Catholic, also gained interest from those three schools.

Larry Beckett, a 6-foot-7 post from Satellite Academy in The Bronx, continued his big July and Severe had a few big shooting games.

The Lightning also won the Hall of Fame Invitational in Springfield, Mass., during the first 10-day July period. McNeil said it was a team effort throughout the month and credited his core that has been together for a few years, guys like Boswell, Severe, Iverson and Mount Vernon’s Josh Doughty.

“The guys know what to expect,” McNeil said. “They know my expectations of them. I know their expectations of me. It works.”